In the first part of the book, Youngblood attempts to show how expanded cinema will unite art and life.
The future shock of the Paleocybernetic Age will change fundamental concepts such as intelligence, morality, creativity and the family (pp.
The Intermedia network of the mass media is contemporary man's environment, replacing nature.
The Noosphere (a term Youngblood borrows from Teilhard de Chardin) is the organizing intelligence of the planet—the minds of its inhabitants.
"Distributed around the globe by the intermedia network, it becomes a new technology that may prove to be one of the most powerful tools in man's history" (p. 57).
He defends the universality of art against the localism of entertainment: The intermedia network has made all of us artists by proxy.
Filmmakers that Youngblood think embody this synesthetic syncretism include: Stan Brakhage (p. 87), Will Hindle, Pat O'Neill, John Schofill, and Ronald Nameth.
Filmmakers that present ideas of polymorphous eroticism, the blurring of sexual boundaries, include Andy Warhol and Carolee Schneemann (pp.
Michael Snow's Wavelength is also an example of synaesthetic cinema's extra-objective reality (pp.
At the end of the second part of the book Youngblood writes about the rebirth of the cottage industry in the post-mass-audience age.
Video tapes can be exchanged freely, films are becoming more personal, specializations are ending (pp.
Youngblood describes the videosphere, in which computers and televisions are extensions to man's central nervous system.
The various processes involved in video synthesizing are described: de-beaming, keying, chroma-keying, feedback, mixing, switching and editing (pp.
The work of Loren Sears is neuroesthetic because it treats television as an extension of the central nervous system (pp.
The curator James Newman moved from a traditional gallery to a conceptual gallery with his joint project with KQED-TV, commissioning television work from Terry Riley, Yvonne Rainer, Frank Zappa, Andy Warhol, The Living Theater, Robert Frank and Walter De Maria (pp.
Artists such as Carolee Schneemann and Robert Whitman combine film projection with live performance (pp.
Light shows are used in concerts and multiple projectors and video screens create complex environments.